Sing for Science featuring David Byrne and Patrik Svensson

Sing for Science is an award winning, Top 10 Music Interview Podcast on Apple’s charts where musicians talk about science with scientists, scholars, and science journalists. Past episodes include Korn front man Jonathan Davis and science writer Mary Roach on mortuary science, SIA and sex therapist Alex Katehakis on attachment theory, Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Python creator Guido Van Rossum on coding, and dozens more that engage science-curious fans of music like no other podcast. The show is hosted by New York musician Matt Whyte, whose credits include composing for Netflix’s Tiger King, Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, and fronting the mid-aughts band Earl Greyhound. Matt cites his participation in a Pete Seeger memorial concert at New York City’s Joe’s Pub as the podcast’s inspiration; it was there that he became acutely aware of the breadth of issues to which Pete applied the power of song in his pursuit of change.

Patrik Svensson is an arts and culture journalist. He lives with his family in Malmö, Sweden. The Book of Eels is his first book.

David Byrne (b. 1952, Dumbarton, Scotland) was raised in Baltimore where he briefly attended the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 1971 after transferring from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Byrne studied photography, performance, and video production at MICA. In 1975 Byrne co-founded the group Talking Heads, who in the 1980s introduced an innovative visual approach to their performances. 

Byrne has been involved with photography, drawing, installations, performance, and design since college and has been publishing and exhibiting his work since the 1990s. Like his music, Byrne’s visual work has the capacity to elevate and transform ordinary elements into iconic ones and challenges our fundamental notions of what can be classified as art. Recent works include music for the immersive disco pop musical Here Lies Love (2023); Theater of the Mind (2022), an immersive journey co-created by Byrne and writer Mala Gaonkar at Denver Center for Performing Arts; SOCIAL! at The Park Avenue Armory (2021); the Broadway production of David Byrne’s American Utopia (2019), as well as the Spike Lee directed film version (2020); the launch of his Reasons to be Cheerful online magazine (2019), and the solo album American Utopia (2018). Byrne was the guitarist and lead singer for Talking Heads and established the record labels Luaka Bop (1988) and Todo Mundo (2008). Other artistic achievements include the theatrical piece Joan of Arc: Into the Fire (2017), a series of interactive environments questioning human perception and bias; The Institute Presents: NEUROSOCIETY (2016); the theatrical production Here Lies Love (2013); the public installation Tight Spot (2011) at Pace Gallery; the audio installation Playing the Building (2005); and the public installation Everything is Connected (2002) at Saks Fifth Avenue, New York. 

Byrne wrote, directed, and starred in True Stories, a musical collage of discordant Americana released in 1986. For his contribution to The Last Emperor’s soundtrack, Byrne received an Academy Award for Best Original Score and in 2004, Byrne won the Wired Award for Art for his project Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (EEEI) that used the presentation software PowerPoint as an art medium. 

Most recently, Byrne joined forces with Mitski and Son Lux and released This Is A Life, which was featured on the Everything Everywhere All At Once soundtrack and is nominated for Best Original Song at the 2023 Academy Awards.  His book projects include True Stories (1986); Strange Ritual (1995); Your Action World (1998, 1999); The New Sins/Los Nuevos Pecados (2001); David Byrne Asks You: What Is It? (2002); Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (2003); Arboretum (2006) and How Music Works (2012). Byrne lives and works in New York City.